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That favour Pan and Phœbus both alike."

This appears to be a reflection of Greene's "rude groomes" of the previous September and a reference to Shakespeare's theatrical work and his Venus and Adonis, which, though only recently published, had no doubt been read in MS. form for some time before.

I shall now proceed to show that at the end of 1593, after Lord Pembroke's company had returned from their unprofitable provincial tour when they were compelled to "pawn their apparel for their charges," George Chapman wrote a play satirising Shakespeare and the disastrous fortunes of this company. This play was revised by Marston and Chapman in 1599, under the title of Histriomastix, or The Player Whipt, as a counter-attack upon Shakespeare in order to revenge the satire which he, in conjunction with Dekker and Chettle, directed against Chapman and Marston in Troilus and Cressida, and in a play reconstructed from Troilus and Cressida by Dekker and Chettle, called Agamemnon, in 1598-99. This latter phase of the matter shall be dealt with when I come to a consideration of the literary warfare of the later period.

It has never before been suggested that George Chapman had any hand in the composition of Histriomastix, though Mr. Richard Simpson shows clearly that it was an old play roughly revised in the form in which it was acted in 1599. Mr. Simpson suggests that it might have been written by Peele, in its original form, owing to certain verbal resemblances between portions of it and Peele's dedication to his Honour of the Garter. He dates its original composition in about 1590, but in doing so had evidently forgotten that he had already written: "The early Chrisoganus (of this play) seems to be of the time when the Earl of Northumberland, Raleigh, and Harriot strove to set up an Academy in London, and the spirit of the play, and even its expressions, were quite in unison with Peele's dedication of his Honour of the Garter,1593." All literary and historical references to the academical efforts of the Earl of Northumberland, Harriot, and others point to the years 1591-93 as the time in which this attempt to establish an Academy was made. Chapman in his dedication of The Shadow of Night to Roydon, in 1594, refers to the movement as then of comparatively recent date. "But I stay this spleen when I remember, my good Matthew, how joyfully oftentimes you reported unto me that most ingenious Derby, deep-searching Northumberland, and skill-embracing Earl of Hunsdon had most profitably entertained learning in themselves to the vital warmth of freezing Science," etc. Peele's allusions to the movement in his dedication to the Honour of the Garter, which is dated 26th June 1593, are as follows:

"Renowned Lord, Northumberland's fair flower,

The Muses' love, patron and favourite,

That artisans and scholars dost embrace.

And clothest Mathesis in rich ornaments,

That admirable mathematic skill,

Familiar with the stars and Zodiac,

To whom the heaven lies open as her book;

By whose directions undeceivable,

Leaving our Schoolmen's vulgar trodden paths,

And following the ancient reverent steps

Of Trismegistus and Pythagoras,

Through uncouth ways and unaccessible,

Doth pass into the pleasant spacious fields

Of divine science and philosophy," etc.

Shakespeare evidently reflects knowledge of this academical attempt and pokes fun at the scholars in his reference to "a little academie" in Love's Labour's Lost:

"Navarre shall be the wonder of the world

Our Court shall be a little academie

Still and contemplative in living art."

This play was originally written late in 1591, but was drastically revised late in 1594, or early in 1595, after Shakespeare had read Chapman's Hymns to the Shadow of Night; and again, in 1598. The reference to the Academy was evidently introduced at the time of its first revision.

Mr. Simpson recognises the fact that most of the Chrisoganus passages, especially those in the earlier portions of Histriomastix, pertain to the play in its original form. If the reader will take the trouble to read Chapman's Hymns